John 11:45-57

Caiaphas

If ever anyone needed proof that miracles alone do not bring faith they need only read this passage. Some of the people who saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead still did not believe. Instead they went and reported the bad news to Pharisees. Brilliant!

In the ensuing meet a remarkable thing happened. Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, prophesied! It didn’t sound like a prophecy. It didn’t start with, “Thus saith the Lord.” It started with, “You know nothing at all.” (“Thus saith the Lord” tends to get a much better love offering than “You know nothing at all.”)

Prophecy is simply bringing the word of the Lord. There is precedent for prophecy coming from an unlikely source. In Numbers we see Balaam being an unsavory character but still bringing the word of the Lord. For that matter, we see Balaam’s donkey also bringing the word of the Lord. Therefore, it is understandable that a high priest of Israel, even if he was a bit if a scoundrel, could on the right occasion, have the word of the Lord.

In this case the word sounds sinister on the surface but has an underlying meaning, completely unknown to Caiaphas, that is love personified. “It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” He was looking at the political (a common mistake among religious types) and thinking that Jesus needed to die so that the people wouldn’t get too excited and rebel against Rome. Such a rebellion would bring about their destruction as a nation. (Of course this very thing happened in A.D. 70 even though Jesus did die. The political viewpoint rarely anticipates the consequences correctly.) What God meant by the words of Caiaphas was that unless Jesus died for us we would all die in our sins.

God can take our worst intentions and turn them into His best purposes. It was your finest moment, Caiaphas, and you didn’t even know it.